Saturday, 22 December 2012

One more reason why legislatures should sit more than once a year

Every day I am reminded of the pace of change. Nothing is more trite to say, but it’s
still true: change is pervasive and relentless and unavoidable. To take just one example, hardly a day
goes by that I am not asked to update one of my small handful of smartphone
apps. Either the programmer made
an error that has only now been discovered (a fortnight after he discovered the
last mistake), or the designer has thought of some way she could improve it. Every machine and tool and device I can
think of is constantly being updated - just think of how often someone
re-invents the screwdriver (and advertises the revolutionary and
transformational and convenient completely new version of a screwdriver on late night shopping
channels) and you’ll know what I mean.

So would you permit me a leap from this utterly banal observation
to a comment about law-making and legislatures?

Our provincial legislature did not sit this fall, and more often
than not over the past several years has been sitting only once a year, usually
for a spring session that begins in February and ends in about May. People ask me why, and if I feel like
avoiding the question I usually offer a smart-alec answer like, “Hey, the two
main purposes of the legislature are to pass bills and give government
permission to spend money. Do you
want more laws and more government spending?”

But a legislature does not just make new laws, it updates old
ones. Corrects errors that may not
become apparent until the new law was implemented. And refines, expands, adjusts the law to changing
circumstances. Sometimes courts
interpret legislature-made law in a way that defeats the policy intentions of
the government that enacted it; often the only way to restore the policy
intention is by revising the legislation.

None of this work can be done unless the legislature is in
session.

The question of how often a legislature should sit is usually
discussed as an issue of democratic principle. One way of expressing that principle is to say that the
legislature is the only place where government can formally be held accountable
for its decisions; it is the people’s chamber and needs to sit to do the
people’s business. A government
which infrequently convenes the legislature is, the argument goes, avoiding
accountability.

But in a rapidly-changing world, perhaps there is another reason
why government should call the legislature into session on a regular basis, and
that is simply for quality control purposes, to ensure that there is an
opportunity to improve and correct legislation. We need to update our laws just like we need to update our
smartphone apps. Maybe not every
couple of weeks, but surely more often than once a year.

When outdated or badly designed laws are allowed to hang around
the statute books, or when law is not kept up-to-date, there are lots of real
world impacts: tax calculations, the rules for running a strata council,
residential tenancy dispute resolution, the enforceability of contracts made on
the Internet, legislation that governs almost every not-for-profit association
in the province - all these areas of life are governed by complex legislation
that often needs to be revised and updated. If the needed changes aren’t made, the result is uncertainty
and unfairness.

Asking legislatures to sit more often is not therefore just about
democracy, it’s also about making the business of government more
business-like, responsive to the practical and sometimes urgent needs of
citizens, as able to implement and respond to change just as often as we are
all required to do in the rest of our lives.

And if you will permit me one more leap, these sorts of
considerations also help explain why the federal Conservative party’s current
fixation on massive omnibus bills is not just un-democratic, it’s also a
high-risk way to making law that significantly increases the likelihood that
errors will be made. When
government tables a bill that is hundreds of pages long, covers a diverse range
of entirely unrelated subjects, and then truncates debate, it denies members of
parliament the opportunity to do one of their most important tasks: to
scrutinize legislation; to examine and test both its principles and its
details; to fix errors; and to fine tune that which needs adjustment. Competent as they are, legislative
drafters do not always get it right.
Cabinet ministers are often required to amend their own bills while they
are being passed because some sharp eye found a mistake after the bill was
tabled. The proposition that
nothing anyone in parliament says could possibly improve their legislation is a
special form of arrogance on the part of the federal Conservatives. But it’s not just undemocratic. It’s also, put simply, not very businesslike.